Featured Letter: A better location for PBMC’s annex

Peconic Bay Medical Center is seeking to build a 3,500-square-foot medical site in the corner of Gateway Plaza, where Bob’s Discount Furniture is located. (Credit: Barbaraellen Koch)

To the editor:

Re: the Dec. 25 article on the PBMC Health application to build an annex on Route 58, in front of Bob’s Furniture.

PBMC is an excellent institution and I would welcome the annex, but I must ask: Why there? After a year of fighting and protesting over the Brixmor building of the Costco store in what became a battle over the clear-cutting of trees and the two phases of construction; Brixmor never fully developed the area assigned to the first phase. There, sits a very large piece of land where trees and privacy once thrived.

Why is no one building there? Also why permit Applebee’s to add two more stores on their land when again there sits unused acreage already cleared and prepared for construction? The traffic is already congested along Route 58 and if these three new buildings are added it will not help the present situation but may be unavoidable. However, if these three buildings are built in their present, applied-for locations — and then Brixmor goes forward with the two phases of construction that they proposed and are approved for in the Costco plaza — the traffic along Route 58 will be intolerable. I hope the Town Board will consider making these applicants consider land already approved for development before approving application in existing parking lots along the already-congested area of Route 58.